23 December 2011

Court Dates For Blood & Honour Members Postponed

Now we can't say how Miller and Macdonald will defend themselves, but it appears that part of de Chazal's defence will be that he is not a neo-Nazi and that language describing him as such is prejudicial:

Lawyers for three men charged in a series of Lower Mainland assaults police characterized as hate crimes appeared in Vancouver provincial court Friday and asked the judge to push back the men's arraignment dates.

The three men — Robertson de Chazal, 25, Alastair Miller, 20, and Shawn MacDonald, 39 — are facing assault charges stemming from several incidents, including one where a man was set on fire.

On Oct. 10, 2009, a 26-year-old Filipino man from New Westminster, B.C., passed out on a couch that had been discarded on Commercial Drive in East Vancouver. He woke up to find his clothes burning, and suffered minor injuries before being able to put the flames out.

Witnesses in the area reported seeing three men standing over the sleeping man and spraying some type of fluid, believed to be lighter fluid, on the victim before lighting him on fire.

But a lawyer for de Chazal, David Sutherland, said that police shouldn't have staged a news conference labelling the men as neo-Nazis.

"It's difficult for Mr. de Chazal, his family and his friends to defend themselves from the totally inappropriate imputations and innuendo the police levelled after the charges were laid," Sutherland said.

Sutherland said de Chazal intends to plead not guilty to the assault charges laid against him stemming from the couch fire incident and from another incident involving an assault against a black man.

All three of the accused are not currently in police custody. They are scheduled to appear in court in January.

These three men should be afforded a fair trial and should be considered innocent unless proven guilty. We apply this to people who's ideology we despise because we want to make damn sure that we or anyone else would be afforded those same considerations in a court of law. And to be sure there it isn't illegal in and of itself to belong to groups such as Blood & Honour, though it certainly says a great deal about the character of anyone who would want to become a member.

3 comments:

This is hilarious! I seem to recall a conversation I had with 'Edmonton Rob' a few years back regarding his opinion of the 'scum who don't stick to their ideals.' He didn't think to highly of them that is for sure!

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